What Ashley St. Clair’s political pivot teaches us about taking accountability

Ashley St. Clair’s fall from conservative grace proves the patriarchy isn’t on your side when you stop playing along.

Former “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) influencer Ashley St. Clair recently made news for suing Grok AI, an image-generation tool invented by Elon Musk.  Despite her long career as a right-wing influencer, St. Clair recently broke conservative ranks by calling out Musk’s alleged neglectful behaviour toward their son, prompting Musk’s fans to generate sexual images of St. Clair using Grok. As St. Clair walks back previous statements of transphobia and bigotry to win back public support, some wonder how much her apologies have to do with saving face.

To be clear: St. Clair is a victim when it comes to AI impersonation. Grok manipulated St. Clair’s image extensively, including a photo where St. Clair is bent over in a bikini in front of her child’s backpack. In an interview with The Guardian images made her feel “horrified” and “violated,” calling it a form of revenge porn.

Her experience with Musk has also impacted her career as a right-wing influencer; she’s isolated herself from right-wing politics and has publicly started displaying a change in her political views. Social media personality June Sternbach took to X to question how St. Clair feels about trans people now that she’s pivoted from right-wing media.

“I feel immense guilt for my role. And even more guilt that things I’ve said in the past may have caused my son’s sister more pain,” St. Clair wrote  in a post on X, referring to Musk’s daughter Vivian Wilson, who’s had her own public disputes with her father after coming out as Trans and taking her mother’s maiden name.

“[I don’t really know] how to make amends for many of these things but I have been trying incredibly hard privately to learn + advocate for those within the trans community that I’ve hurt,” St. Clair wrote in a Jan. 11 post on X.

Back in 2021, she wrote a book titled Elephants Are Not Birds, promoting it with heavy transphobic rhetoric like the idea that “Children will learn that boys are not girls, and Elephants are not Birds.”

Following her recent show of support for the trans community, St. Clair apologized in a Jan. 13 post on X for writing the book and stated that her name will be taken off its publishing as its author, so that she’ll no longer monetarily benefit from sales.

St. Clair doubled down on retracting previous right-wing rhetoric in an interview with left-wing influencer Matt Bernstein on his political podcast “A Bit Fruity.” She revealed monetary incentives—like the offer to publish Elephants are Not Bird—push right-wing influencers further toward conservativism.

In the episode, St. Clair cringes while reacting to her past tweets, confessing her goal was to “trigger the libs,” a goal she describes as “absent [of] any intellectual prowess; there was no critical thinking [when I was posting] any of those at all.”

A Wall Street Journal article from April 15, 2025 on St. Clair and Musk’s custody battle explores how Musk holds his money and power against the women he’s in relationships with, a claim supported by his ex-wife Justine Musk.

While some Reddit users (rightfully) question St. Clair’s intentions regarding her sudden, anti-Musk pivot, recent public interactions suggest she’s truly taking accountability for her actions. The public doesn’t owe her forgiveness or a warm welcome, but dismissing St. Clair outright may be a counterproductive if it shuts out people who may be trying to do better.

St. Clair publicly acknowledging her past doesn’t come from a place of cleaning up her reputation but instead takes accountability for her actions. In the “A Bit Fruity” interview, St. Clair expressed her desire to work towards becoming a lawyer, focusing on those goals instead of trying to continue her social media career by drifting into liberal politics.

Taking accountability shouldn’t be about earning public forgiveness or profiting from the situation, as demonstrated by St. Clair’s shift. Instead, it should be about actually taking responsibility for the harm you’ve caused, even if it comes with social and financial consequences.